As promised in earlier posts its time for some practice working with copper before I attempt to make a central heating boiler for my workshop. Now I am no stranger working with steel and iron, having had a forge now for over 15 years, and jolly good fun it is, but in all that time I have never worked with copper, and I have never brazed anything until today.

Like all my projects I have had a long time to think this through, study books and videos and in those many sleepless hours I have completed the project without a hitch and nothing is an issue , and then you actually have to start, and that’s when the problems start.

First problem occurred as soon as I unpacked my sheet of copper. I had ordered 1.2mm thick copper and received 2mm doesn’t sound a lot until you try and braze it when the amount of heat you need to apply shoots up, bearing in mind that copper is very efficient at transferring heat, which meant brazing for a first time coppersmith a challenge, but as you will see the candle sconce came out OK.

Project 2 was using up some offcuts of copper from the sconce. Hammered thin to about 1mm it became much easier to work and braze. The starting point was to make a cone with a brazed seam, which I am delighted to say held water, add to that some leaves hammered out of some scrap copper pipe, and you have a Daffodil for Mothers Day.